Brotherband 4: Slaves of Socorro (15 page)

They continued beating to the north for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, until Hal judged that they had enough sea room to clear the headland.

Then he brought the little ship round to port again, holding the wind on her beam as they sped across the rolling waves of the Stormwhite. Lydia, who was standing by Hal and Stig at the steering platform, noticed that the young skirl seemed to be preoccupied, sweeping his gaze around the sea to the west of them.

‘Looking for anything in particular?’ she asked.

He shrugged disconsolately. ‘Tursgud and his ship,’ he said. ‘Although I’m afraid they have too much of a lead on us now.’

‘They’ll be long gone,’ Stig agreed.

‘But aren’t we faster than them?’ Lydia asked. In her time as a member of the Herons she had come to assume that their ship could outperform any other ship, in any manoeuvre. She was surprised when Hal shook his head.

‘Not in these conditions. This is one of our best points of sailing – with the wind coming from abeam. But it’s the same for
Nightwolf.
She’ll be moving pretty much as fast as us, or even faster.’

‘Of course, if we were sailing into the wind, we’d have a big advantage,’ Stig said. He didn’t like hearing that any other ship could outperform, or even equal,
Heron.
‘We can point much closer to the wind.’

‘But we’re not,’ Lydia pointed out. ‘We’re sailing across the wind.’

Stig frowned, having to concede that there were some situations where Hal’s ingenious design gave them little or no advantage.

‘Maybe so,’ he said. ‘But we’ll make less leeway.’ He saw she wasn’t totally sure what that meant. ‘We’ll be blown downwind a lot less than he will be. We’ve got that new fin that Hal designed.
Nightwolf
’s keel is a lot shallower than ours, so she has less grip on the water.’

‘But that won’t be enough to let us catch her?’ Lydia said.

Hal decided he should rescue Stig. He was touched that his friend wanted to show their ship in the best possible light, and didn’t enjoy discussing her shortcomings.

‘No. I doubt it,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to keep watching and hope we run across him on the way south, once we round Cape Shelter. Of course,’ he added after a pause, ‘that’s assuming that he is heading that way. He may have turned around and gone east across the Stormwhite.’

But in his heart, he doubted it. Tursgud had been travelling west when he encountered the Gallican trader and Jerard had told them that
Nightwolf
had continued in that direction when Tursgud left the crew of the trader to drown with their ship. It hardly made sense that he would then reverse his course and head back into the Stormwhite.

If they hadn’t been sidetracked by the need to help the Gallican ship, and then further delayed by the deteriorating weather, they might have had a chance to catch him. Now that chance was negligible. Hal doubted they would ever set eyes on Tursgud and his dark blue ship again.

T
hey rounded Cape Shelter three days later, emerging from the Stormwhite into the Narrow Sea, then swinging due south for Araluen.

They had sighted half a dozen other ships during that time, and closed eagerly with all of them. But none of them were the dark blue
Nightwolf.
Two were fishing trawlers from Teutlandt and three others were trading ships from Sonderland – big, clumsy craft with huge lee-boards in place of keels. It was a design feature that allowed the ships to traverse the shallow sandbanks that fringed the Sonderland coast with the boards raised and the ships’ draught reduced, then lower them in deep water to act as keels.

There was also one Gallican ship, heading up from the western coast of Gallica towards the Stormwhite Sea. It was a small craft, looking too flimsy for the robust conditions in the Stormwhite.

They went south with a steady following breeze, the kilometres slipping under their keel with each passing hour. The crew lapsed into the patient, accepting attitude that became the norm on most long trips. The weather was fair. The wind was favourable. They were making good speed and could do nothing to make the ship go faster.

Admittedly, they were sailing in new waters. None of them had come this far west before. But the waters looked the same. The sea was blue on a sunny day, grey when it was overcast. The fresh air smelt of the same salt. There would be no novelty in their lives until they reached new foreign ports. The sea was, after all, the sea.

As a result, they lapsed into a strange, limbo-like feeling of suspended activity and passive acceptance of the passing hours.

Except for Ulf and Wulf.

As ever, with time on their hands, they devoted themselves to endless, and senseless, argument. Watching them, Hal had the feeling that neither of them actually meant what they were saying. They were so accustomed to disagreeing with each other that it was an automatic reaction to not having much to do.

Mindful of Hal’s standing orders, which had Ingvar ready and willing to throw them overboard if they bickered too much while they were at sea, they kept their voices lowered. And they kept a surreptitious watch on their skirl, to make sure he wasn’t becoming annoyed.

Their current subject of dissent was a boot belonging to one of them – although nobody on board was sure which of them it belonged to. Kloof, barred from touching Thorn’s belongings, which Thorn now kept safe in his kit locker, had taken to prowling the rowing benches, searching for unsecured belongings. She was now happily gnawing on the boot, watched by the twins.

‘It’s your boot,’ said Ulf. Or perhaps it was Wulf – nobody was ever sure.

‘No. It’s definitely yours. She wouldn’t chew my boot. She likes me better than you.’

‘Then that’s why she would chew your boot. And anyway, whoever said she likes you better than me?’

‘Are you saying she prefers you?’

‘Of course. Everyone does. That’s a well-known fact.’

‘It’s not a fact, and it’s certainly not well known. After all, our mam loves me better than you and the dog is simply following her example.’

‘You think our mam likes you better than me?’ challenged whichever one was the other. (Don’t blame me. I’ve lost track too.)

‘Obviously.’

‘What makes you say that?’ The challenge was couched in a pugnacious tone. The two boys were getting louder, without realising it. The rest of the crew, who had been content to let the argument ride as long as it didn’t become too intrusive, were all watching the twins now.

‘Ever noticed,’ said Lydia to Hal, ‘how things get loud and aggressive once a mother’s love is invoked?’

‘Every time.’ Hal sighed. He raised his voice. ‘Ingvar?’

The massively built boy was sitting amidships. He looked towards the stern, squinting to see Hal more clearly. He sensed what the skirl had in mind.

‘Ready any time you say, Hal,’ he called.

The twins looked up nervously, first at Hal, then at Ingvar, who was still sitting peaceably on the deck, his feet hanging down into the rowing well. Ingvar was big and it was easy to equate size with clumsiness. But they knew from bitter experience that he could move as quickly as a cat if the need arose. They lowered their voices. Lydia smiled.

‘So . . . what makes you say that Mam loves you more than me?’ one of them – let’s say it was Wulf – muttered.

‘Everyone knows it. Even the dog senses it. She senses it in your reaction.’

‘What reaction?’ Wulf demanded angrily and his brother made a tut-tutting noise.

‘The dog can sense that you’re angry, and she senses it’s because our mam loves me more than she does you.’

‘I’m not angry because of that!’ Wulf shouted. ‘I’m angry because you’re an idiot!’

Ingvar looked questioningly at Hal. Hal held up a hand for him to wait.

‘An idiot?’ Ulf asked.

Wulf glared at him. ‘And a blithering twit. How’s that?’ He beamed triumphantly, then stopped beaming as his brother grabbed him in a headlock. They struggled together for a few seconds, then Hal signed for Ingvar to intervene.

‘All right, Ingvar. Throw one overboard.’

‘Which one, Hal?’ Ingvar asked.

Hal shrugged. ‘Do I look as if I care? Pick one and throw him overboard.’

Ingvar stepped down into the rowing well and grabbed one of the struggling twins by the scruff of his neck. With no apparent effort, he dragged him clear of his brother and hoisted him to his feet. He looked at Hal to make sure. They’d threatened this punishment many times but never actually carried it out at sea.

Hal paused for a second, but then his resolve hardened. Perhaps it was time they did carry through on the threat, he thought. The twins had obviously become a little complacent. It was as well that Hal had ordered all the crew to learn how to swim. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be on board ship and not to have that basic skill. He gestured over the side.

‘Throw him,’ he said.

Ingvar hoisted the twin – it happened to be Ulf – onto the rail. Instantly, Wulf was on his feet to protect his sibling. Typical, thought Hal. They would fight like cat and dog right up until the point when someone else threatened one of them. Then they would unite against the common foe.

‘You leave my brother alone!’ Wulf demanded, his fists bunched.

Ingvar regarded him placidly for a second or two.

‘All right,’ he said. He released his hold on Ulf and the boy tumbled back on board the ship. Wulf grinned triumphantly, then neighed in terror as Ingvar grabbed him instead.

‘Hal said he didn’t care which one of you went,’ Ingvar said, and hurled Wulf into the sea. Kloof barked excitedly and Stig hurried to grab her collar before she could go after Wulf and fetch him.

Wulf surfaced, spluttering and spitting sea water, in the wake astern of
Heron.

‘Jesper, Stefan,’ called Hal, ‘let the sheets fly.’

As they did and the sail lost power, he swung the tiller to bring
Heron
round one hundred and eighty degrees.

Stig, grinning widely, took the boat hook from its rack against the mast.

‘Now I suppose we’d better haul him back aboard,’ he said.

T
wo days after they had rounded Cape Shelter, they saw the dim grey line of the Araluen coast off their starboard bow. Gradually, the country began to take on greater definition as they came closer.

‘It’s very green,’ Stig said, as they began to make out forests and cultivated fields. There was a gentle look to the land – unlike their homeland, with its rocky cliffs, steep, snow-capped mountains and dull green pine forests interspersed with low-lying buildings constructed from massive, rough-hewn logs.

Occasionally, they sighted a village close to the coast and Hal took the ship in for a closer look. The houses were generally wattle and daub – the walls made from thin willow strands woven together over a light timber frame and sealed with liberal applications of mud. The whole structure, once the mud daub dried and hardened, was then sealed with whitewash. The roofs were thatched, with eaves overhanging to below a man’s height. Cows and sheep grazed in the lush green fields that lined the coast. None of them took any notice of the small ship speeding past.

They sighted no large ships moored in the many bays they passed. But there was a large number of fishing craft in evidence, usually clustered together in groups of four or five, tied up alongside jetties that snaked their way out into the bays.